Lush season is here: flowers and butterflies

Passionflower and passionfruit. (Available as a print, a cutting board, and stationery cards, benefitting the New York Botanical Garden.)

With rains returning, plants thrive. The passionflowers grow more than they are eaten by the Gulf Fritillary butterfly caterpillars. I took this photo from in front of our place:

Before social media and smart phones with cameras, illustrators like Étienne Denisse (1785–1861) brought the world of botany to us via drawings. The New York Botanical garden is celebrating her work with a book of her flower and fruit illustrations. I found Denisse's passionflower drawing via Brain Pickings, a favorite Sunday newsletter in my email in-box.

Interested in adding passionflower to your butterfly garden? THIS POST includes photos and names of selected varieties. 

Most flowers attract butterflies. Here is a White Peacock Butterfly in the butterfly garden.

"Most butterflies live on nectar from flowers and some also receive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, carrion, dung, aphid honeydew and minerals found in wet sand or dirt." - Choose Natives 

On a recent trip to North Carolina, I saw a bunch of butterflies on a dirt road getting minerals.

If your village is interested in incorporating little butterfly gardens, this website matches butterfly species with their host plants. Where to find these plants in our area? Check out Sweetbay Nursery and Florida Native Plants. (Links in the sidebar of this website.) It's a good time to plant.

See the difference in flora from a recent post where I showed a photograph of the pond's low levels? Before:

Now, look:

Waiting and slowing down

Spoonbill Roseate in a Southern Live Oak tree, 6.13.21

A wise friend told me that when waiting, enjoy the reminder to slow down. Waiting when? Well, in line at the store, for your grandkids to put their shoes on, or perhaps waiting for rain to soak this season's parching drought. 

Maybe, like Steve in Woodlawn, the wait is for the Wood Ducklings to hatch and leap. He sits outside early morning and evening. By his count, any day there will be babies:

The hen was not in the nest this afternoon so I took a peek. Carefully tucked in under a one inch thick "down blanket" are 13 eggs. They were completely concealed.  In the past when ducks were dumping eggs they made no effort what so ever to cover them. She has really gone out of her way to keep them warm. My hopes remain high. Can you imagine mama and papa cruising across the pond trailing 13 little ones?

This is the box Steve refers to - it's full of life:

How to ease the wait? 

For me, I notice my breath coming in and out. It helps to soften the gaze. Maybe take a nap. 

Or maybe like Jeanne does, we look out toward the pond to see what we see. For her, it's an Anhinga drying its wings almost faithfully in the same spot each day.

Or, perhaps like Marc you step out the door to walk and notice the beauty of this extraordinary place we live. Marc takes his camera - lucky for us. His photographs feel like gift glimpses of his slowed gait. He writes, "A honeybee pollinating a Crepe Myrtle tree." 

Cooper's Hawk

Marc is also photographing turtles in the gardens! A Peninsula Cooter laying eggs. 

Marc's peek up at the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron chicks who are now juveniles.

Yesterday at our front door: a Gulf Fritillary emerges as I return home from chores. How lucky am I to witness this? 

Minutes later, Gulf Fritillary flew to the butterfly garden.

NOTE

In July, my website widget for those who signed up to automatically receive posts will no longer be available. Options to see posts:

1. Visit Wildewood Wonders on your own. 

2. Send me your email address (barrettsmb@gmail.com) and I'll send a monthly reminder link to new posts.

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While I gazed at the Bottlebrush blooms...

Bottlebrush Tree

I was admiring all the butterflies on this Bottlebrush tree, the Passionflower vine that winds its way through it, and the Porterweed and Firebush below the blooms. In a blink, this non-native but established Brown Anole grabbed a Gulf Fritillary Butterfly. 

Brown Anoles eat a wide variety of insects, spiders, and other invertebrates. And butterflies? Oh my. Here are some other lizards in our region.

Brown Anoles can appear larger than they are, especially when framing the photograph.

So as the stories flow, I heard this happened early yesterday morning, but I wasn't there.

A Yellow Crowned Night Heron pair was overhead while ducks swam in a pool (not Pineneedle). A snake was in the ground cover and an owl was getting the snake. 

Our wildlife neighbors are lively.

(I hope so much that you are okay with snakes. They are so important to the habitat cycle of life. Oh, and they are afraid of you.)

Butterfly gardens - Gulf Fritillary, Skipper, Monarch, and Cassius Blue

There are now 5 butterfly gardens in Pineneedle. A butterfly garden holds plants that pollinators visit. It's also a garden that birds and beneficial insects visit working harmonically together. These gardens can be whimsical and wild looking or ordered such as the butterfly gardens at Selby Gardens or on the Ringling Museum grounds. Both organizations offer classes to learn more about how to plant butterfly gardens. 

Here are 4 butterflies and flowers they visit in one of the Pineneedle butterfly gardens.

An adult male Fiery Skipper butterfly on purple Mealycup Sage, a salvia.

Monarch Butterly on a Golden Dewdrop Bush.

Milkweed Plant is the Monarch caterpillar's host plant. Find Florida varieties at Sweetbay Nursery or Florida Native Plants Nursery. Image from FNPN.

A Cassius Blue butterfly on a Scorpion Tail plant. Though I purchase Scorpion Tail at Sweetbay Nursery, Native Plants of Florida Nursery carries them, too. A host plant for the Cassius Blue caterpillar is Plumbago. 

Gulf Fritillary on a Passionflower. A posted note shares information with neighbors and reduces unnecessary pesticide.